Thursday, March 27, 2008

Introducing: Alternate Inbox Names

Mailinator helps thousands of people every day avoid spam. It's been a great success.

One point that always sort of bothered me however was that by giving out a Mailinator address, you were basically telling people not only how to email you, but also how they can check *your* email. If I say "Email me at binkypop@mailinator.com", the whole world knows where to send and read my email!

Well, this is no longer a problem. Today we added "Alternate Inboxes" to Mailinator. We've always had alternate domains, but this is quite different.

Now, if you check any inbox on Mailinator (say, binkypop), listed on the page is the alternate inbox name. All alternate inbox names start with "M8R-". For example, for binkypop, the alternate inbox name is M8R-yg1hkn@mailinator.com.

So simply put, if you email binkypop@mailinator OR M8R-yg1hkn@mailinator.com it doesn't matter. Both emails would end up in the binkypop inbox (and nothing in the M8R-yg1hkn inbox). The only way to find out an alternate inbox name is to check the inbox here first - thus if you give out the alternate address, there is no way for anyone to guess that it actually goes to binkypop.

So.. pick yourself a favorite Mailinator inbox name (make it big, long, and hard-to-guess please!), go check the inbox to find out the alternate inbox name, and hand it out all over the web (of course, alternate domains work on alternate inboxes too!).

Then check the box (or RSS it) knowing only you know thats the real destination. Also, keep in mind - you don't have to remember the alternate inbox name ever - you just have to remember the real destination address. You can always go to Mailinator and get the alternate anytime just by checking the inbox. And of course, the regular think-up-on-the-fly-and-use Mailinator you know and love hasn't changed a bit. This feature is purely optional (I'm surprised how fast people started using it!)

(This feature is in beta and we might end up changing the alternate address scheme some)

This is cool. Alternate inboxes really do up the ante in Mailinator's spam fighting abilities. Enjoy !

Hi Mailinator guy.Great new feature.By the way, I would love to use an RSS feed to check my mailinator inbox.But I can't with my RSS reader which is my Internet Explorer browser.When I tried to load the feed from Mailnator I get this message"Internet Explorer cannot display this feed. Internet Explorer does not support feeds with DTDs."Thought you should know.Thanks!

It's amazing how you still strive to improve this service. I don't know how to tell it in english, but in greek I'd say that you have "μεράκι" :D (there is no exact translation, I'm afraid... probably it means "passion for what you are doing and the will and the patience to make it as good as you can").

This is the first time I write here, but I've always wanted to say a big "thank you" for mailinator.

You've saved me (and thousands of other users) of the pain of having multiple secondary e-mail addresses for the sole purpose of registration or for untrusted parties. And you've saved my mailbox from loads of spam, too! So... thank you!

neato. would it be possible to make the REVERSE work? I don't care what URL or feed I use to see the mail, but I'd like my (long and unlikely to be duplicated) address I give out to be somewhat meaningful.

Also, what about all my m8r-foobar@mailinator addresses? Do they still work?

About this alternate inbox scheme ... I think it would be more 'natural' to reverse this one.In your example: "Email me at binkypop@mailinator.com", will become "Email me at M8R-yg1hkn @mailinator.com".Yeah right, not a very nice name to leave. Wouldn't it be prettier to leave "Email me at Prettyname@M8R-domainname.com" ?

We, ourselves should check before (just as we have to do now) our hard-to-remember-name@M8R-domainname.com. Only this hard-to-remember-name@M8R-domainname.com should have a real INBOX then, NOT the Prettyname@M8R-domainname.com.

Some of you might be missing the point... mailinator is for spam. The point is to have a meaningful address to help YOU remember... why does a spambot need a meaningful email addy? Reversing the alternate inbox scheme is more like a registration-based vanity email service, of which there are plenty already!

I'd also like to vote for the reverse service, though I understand it's way harder. Presumably, the xxx name is just a hash of the user name which is calculated on the fly when the user checks mail? That doesn't seem to have a backwards analog. Though you might consider instead of a 1-way hash, instead using a 2-way encryption. Then when user logs in you could grab the mail from "user" and "decrypted user".

And even keeping the current hash scheme, would it be possible to calculated a long, say 256 bit, hash key and split it into 8 32-bit hash names. So one user gets 8 different mailboxes?

Whatever, it's great the way it is. I'd pay good money for pop access to mailboxes here. :)

I suppose I'm being dense here, but something about this alternate inbox name doesn't make sense. I just put in my username - without logging in with my password - and it gave me my alternate box name. How does that protect me? If that alternate name is given after I put in my password, that's a great idea, but anyone can get the alternate name as I did w/o pw. Did I miss something?

When you sign up to whatever site, you use your alternate email address to sign up with that site. Thus, when I try to read your email, I only have your alternate address, which means that I can't access your mailbox, as I need your primary address to login.

I'm not sure this blog is the right place to air improvements & suggestions- even relevant ones- if you look on the mailinator homepage, you'll find a the creator has an "@mailinator" address himself. That would be a more tactful & diplomatic way to pursue your query/idea, after all we're being provided with a very useful free service, no? Just a thought! :)

Mailinator was already a great idea.

I've seen the "what's this?" link next to the "Alternate Address for this Inbox:" line a few times, but never clicked it until this visit! Dohhh..

I've been reading about talkinator too, and will probably be testing it out soon. Plus I plan on mentioning your creations to everyone I know who may find them useful.

Thank you very much for providing these useful, no-hassle, free services to people! My hat's off to you and others like you, your generosity speaks for itself.

Is there any way of recovering the original address? I gave the M8R-xxxxx@mailinator address and wrote it down but forgot the original simple name. Now going to M8R-xxxxx does not allow me to view the mailbox. Doh.

To user above me: As long as the generation algorithm has a good statistical spread, and taking into account that the length of the string is 6 chars = 2.2 billion different addresses, it seems rather difficult for typed mail addresses to collide.

Surely not *occasional*, simply *probable*.

After all, it is mentioned that the feature is beta and the scheme may sometime be altered. ;)

but if sm1 (say my friend) make my alternate address as her "pretty address",she too gets an alternate add.

now, if she gives out her "pretty address" (which is my alternate address) to everyone, and people start mailing her, wouldn't it be me who get all those mails?.. and at the same time, wouldn't she be missing all her mails?!

or.. is ther any rule that says: ur pretty add shouldn't contain M8R as prefix?if ther is a rule like that, then wouldn't HER alternate address fetch her all her mails?

It would be nice if, say I like to use the front portion of my gmail address as a default mailinator account, to have a consistent M8R assigning pattern so that way I'm just memorizing the M8R prefix, so I avoid having to "login" (although that doesn't take that long)into a mailinator account to get a M8R number. I suppose this is lesser security but...it would be more convenient. Either way your product ROCKS!!! and this beta feature works ultraswell.

F**kn Wicked! Thank you. I had no clue about the ability existing to also check one's email. That sucks.

I would say..yeah.. having the ability to check anybody's mail is beyond a flaw. Thanx for creating this. Now I just have to go and change the address at all those wonderfully supposedly private sites I left the addy at

Can't thank you enough for this. I've been using mailinator since seeing it featured on local TV news. It was already a great idea back then -- long before the alternative address feature was added -- it's even better now !

You, good sir, are a positive legend for offering this service. Amd I still cannot believe it's still going, profitable enough to cover your costs. As I said, legendary! This site ought to go down in history like the googles, youtubes and website pop-ups before it!

REally Really nice! One slight help might be to allow the alternate address to be added to the chrome widget (as the alternate addresses are hard to remember) I suppose you could alsoallow for custom choice of alt address, but that would pose problems for duplicate checking and whatnot that I thing would be more difficult than its worth. Anyway, FANTASTIC job, fantastic service, Thank you so much!

Although M8R-yg1khn@veryrealemail.com points to binkypop@mailinator.com, you can use that email address so nobody can guess that it goes to binkypop or @mailinator.com without knowledge about Mailinator.

This is an awesome, awesome feature. For people like myself who use this service to sign up to services without revealing either their real email address, nor that they are using a disposable one, this gives an extra layer of security and privacy.

Highly recommended!

Do you have an Amazon wishlist or something where we can show some appreciation?

Very happy with mailinator. Re alternate addresses, would be great if the email addresses were reversed- the "word address you choose" could be checked using the "encrypted address provided by mailinator" This would make remembering the email address you give out easier.

I really like the idea of reversing the M8R and the real identities. That way, I give out, "easytoremember@mailinator.com" but must check "M8R-K326@mailinator" < fictitious >, which my browser or lastpass remembers.